The new Robert Dessaix book Arabesques: A Tale of Double Lives is a beautiful book in many ways. Not only is the layout expansive and generous, but the pictures that illustrate it are gorgeous too. The fact that it’s such an attractive book makes it immediately more readable, and the tales of Dessaix’s travels are personal and interesting.
The premise of the book is that Dessaix is interested in the French writer Andre Gide, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1947. After stumbling by chance across the castle in the French countryside where Gide grew up, Dessaix decided he would travel further to experience places that were important to Gide’s character and writing.
This journey takes Dessaix from a casbah in Algiers, through various parts of France and Morocco, and to the streets of Sousse in Tunisia, and all manner of places in between. The narrative is a mix of musings on the life of writer Gide, travel adventures from Dessaix’s own experience, and interactions with various local people – including some who know more of Gide’s life than others. As a reader, you certainly don’t need to know much about the writer Gide to be able to enjoy this travelogue, and the physical beauty of this book which matches the story.
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MixxTags: Book Review, france, Morocco, Robert Dessaix, Travel Books, Tunisia
Categories: Travel Books
{ 1 comment }
Thanks for the tip. The cover is gorgeous, and I love that–in a way–I’ll be getting 2 writers for the price of one!
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